Among the growing perplexed population is Mark Barnes (not his real name), vice president of a marketing company. When we spoke with Mark he was becoming increasingly frustrated at the behavior of Jennifer Moline (also not her real name), his most talented employee. “She is intelligent, great at her job, and highly creative,” said Mark. But he was troubled by the feeling that Jennifer was not 100% engaged and, perhaps more so, by the fact that he didn’t understand why and didn’t know what he could do.

Like any manager keen to maximize the potential of a great employee, Mark went out of his way to learn more about Jennifer. He talked to her and her colleagues. He saw that she and her fellow workers merged their private and professional lives. Jennifer, he learned, was passionate about the role of women in the workplace and was active in one of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean-in circles. If he had taken his research out of the office, Mark would have found that Jennifer felt very strongly about her local identity and bought her vegetables from a local organic cooperative; at the same time, she was concerned about global issues and invested her savings in Indiegogo, a global crowdfunding platform. Mark might also have noticed that Jennifer continuously received messages from numerous global and local LinkedIn groups, was a member of a local choir, and had recently started a book club with like-minded friends.

Mark and Jennifer are not alone. Executives and their employees have raised these issues with us in classes and on consulting assignments throughout the world. We live in tribal times. What matters for people like Jennifer is peer recognition of one’s contribution to a common goal in a small community.

The choice for people like Mark is simple: think about tribes in your organization to engage your employees and maximize their potential – or risk losing your best talent as they continue to engage elsewhere.

How we identify with others

Tribes are defined as a group of people who feel emotionally connected, share a mutual interest, and organize different aspects of their personal and professional lives jointly, with the goal of fulfilling a common objective that is good for the community. Tribes used to be formed on sameness, whereas today’s tribes are more often based on common interest or a shared purpose. New tribes do not provide us a permanent shelter to guarantee our survival, only a temporary space in which to act with other individuals who share a common goal. Thanks to technology, people can now belong simultaneously to multiple tribes. The high interconnectivity makes it difficult to identify who belongs to what group, but it makes collaboration between tribes a more likely strategy than competition.

Adherence to tribes is highly individualized. Some strongly associate with their identities of origin, those given at birth – for example, being a woman or a Latino. Others feel weak ties to their identities of origin, but have very strong identities that can be labeled aspirational – being ecological activists, for example. Some, like Jennifer, feel equally strong ties to their identities of origin and those of aspiration – she feels very happy working in a women’s group as well as contributing to a new global community of LinkedIn. And while Jennifer would be pleased with any women’s initiative her company organizes, some of her female colleagues may not be as engaged, or might even reject them.

Faced with such challenges, what can companies do to tap into employees’ tribal senses of identity? And how can they use that to improve engagement? In the work on diversity and innovation we have conducted over recent years, we came to understand some of the keys of tribal thinking, and how some companies are successfully leveraging it.

Tribal thinking inside an organization

Thinking tribal means embracing community without renouncing universality. For executives like Mark Barnes and their organizations, successful engagement of employees in this new tribal reality will be defined by their capacity to understand the tribes emerging inside and outside their organizations. It will mean offering a flexible structure and blurring the line between the two – in other words, allowing employees to bring the external tribes, which they’re engaged in, into the company. Giving employees this freedom to explore and apply their multiple identities and interests at work can result in innovative ideas and profitable new initiatives or business opportunities. Our research suggests there are critical elements of the new tribal paradigm that organizations need to understand: primarily, allowing employee tribes to come together and accommodating a multiplicity of them within your company.

Allowing tribes to form and act on a shared purpose

An interesting example of a tribe coming together and demonstrating high engagement is the case of Dana, the women’s division of the Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank in the United Arab Emirates. Its female employees shared a purpose – wanting to help others. They became aware of a specific need among their clients, and it brought them together to build a product that could be used for their community – Banun. These women employees realized the need of their divorced clients to open accounts in the name of their children without the signature of their husbands as required by the law. Once the need was detected, the managers consulted with the Shari‘a division that also asked for advice to Shari‘a Board, and after some discussions, they agreed to create the Banun account.

The core elements in the cases of Dana are straightforward – being Muslim and women. However, core elements around a tribe are not always equally explicit. Sometimes the common thread is a passion. In these cases of “identities of aspiration,” companies can create the context of possibility, within which tribes can emerge, and then monitor the emergent tribes and react quickly to their needs.

Accommodating a multiplicity of tribes and their ideas

If organizations want to use the tribal force, new forms of management styles are required as the example of Everis illustrates. Everis, a multinational consultant company that offers consulting, IT, and professional services, shows how companies can use employee engagement as a constant fuel for company innovation. In the tribal era, employees’ ideas represent their passions, needs, desires, and even their identities. The company’s “Everis Initiatives,” lets employees come together to develop business ideas without having to leave the organization.

First, an initiative is presented to a team, consisting of 8 partners and 8 managers, for evaluation. If the idea is approved, the group behind it will be granted the necessary time to develop their business plan. The company will offer coaching sessions to help them in the development process and facilitate the capital needed to launch the project and sustain its financial needs for a period of five years.

In 2010, Everis Initiatives received the seventh annual Expansion and Employment Award for Innovation in Human Resources. Eight of its ideas have become stand-alone companies – among them Exerelia, a company specialized in the design, implementation, and management of integral and technological solutions in the field of energy efficiency.

Dana and Everis, represent very different cases of tribal understanding that can provide some useful insights for Mark Barnes in the initial example. First of all, we recommend Mark should see in Jennifer the potential of her individuality but also of her multiple identities. Mark should talk with her to learn about her multiple identities. Then he can explore how her multiple groups can be brought inside the company, or how the company can collaborate with some of her outside affiliations. These could take many forms. He could ask her womens groups how the company’s services can be more adapted to women’s needs. Perhaps he could have her local ecological groups collaborate in some aspects of the company’s services. Through an open continuous dialogue, Jennifer would be more inclined to bring her rich outside world into her work – and this would keep her engaged in the office.

An employee who feels engaged and integrated in a company is not only a brain; she or he represents multiple groups that can help design new products and services, distribute them, and consume them at the end of the day. Moreover, some of the employees’ tribes can collaborate in different aspects of the business and offer ways for the company to collaborate in other businesses. In the emerging collaborative economy, thinking tribal is mandatory.

Celia de Anca, Ph.D. is professor of Community and Islamic Finance at IE Business School, where she also serves on the Executive Committee. She is the author of Beyond Tribalism (Palgrave McMillan 2012) and co-author of Managing Diversity in the Global Organization (Macmillan 2007).

Salvador Aragón is Professor of Information Systems at IE Business School. He is currently researching the role of information technologies in the business organization, their relevance as an engine for innovation and transformation, and how they are managed. He has researched the theoretical concept of digital convergence and has also studied the management of information systems in Spanish firms, and, in collaboration with MIT, the definition of new services on mobile platforms.

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